It seems we are still not done with the aftermath of Nike CEO Phil Knight’s withdrawal of private donations to the University.
While student reaction to the situation has been intriguing and varied, so has the reaction from the off-campus world. Visitors to the Emerald’s Web site and other Duck fan sites have opinions of their own. And some of them aren’t pretty.
As we’ve said earlier, everyone’s reactions to this situation with Knight are to place blame: on protesters, on Knight, on University President Dave Frohnmayer. But because the capitalist system is really what has created this financial and ethical nightmare, who can really be blamed?
Well it seems that some of the community — or at least those most vocal on our Web site — are blaming students for what has happened. Apparently some business people who generally hire University graduates have decided to spurn this year’s crop because we “irresponsible students” have forced the University to sign onto the Worker Rights Consortium and cost the University more than $30 million.
A comment made by “J Browning” popped up on Tuesday: “My company employs 3,000 people and last year hired 113 University graduates. Effective immediately my company will not hire anyone who attended the University in the year 1999-2000. … I feel the current students at the University have shown they are irresponsible and lacking intelligence.” And more comments have come via letters to the editor. “A lot of alumni are absolutely disgusted, and I am one of them,” writes Murtuz Zamanly.
Because we voted (all 2,000 out of 17,000 of us) for the WRC, and because some very vocal protesters camped out on the lawn of Johnson Hall to the same end, students are seen as the instigators of the whole fiasco. For the Knight supporters who want to deny University graduates a job in their companies, the logic is that we had no foresight and did not look at the whole picture when making the decision to join the labor group. We acted passionately, and apparently that’s not a good business skill.
Well, because this University practices a form of shared governance, there is just more to it than that. The University Senate and the Licensing Code of Conduct Committee recommended the WRC, and the University president signed onto it. Students were just one part of the whole process, and those with the least power. It seems ironic that now, when people want to place blame, they turn to the students.
The companies or individuals who have gone so far as to say they will not hire University graduates or who will forever spurn the University because students here are “irresponsible” are just being irresponsible themselves.
They don’t understand that it was Knight who ultimately made the decision to pull his money.
Most of us don’t want to see Knight’s money go. The fact that his reaction to the WRC is to pull funds without even attempting a compromise is unfortunate.
But to blame University students for what has happened when they held the least decision-making power is even more ludicrous. It’s letting emotions rule reason. And isn’t that what these anti-University graduate business people are blaming us for — being too emotional and not thinking of the bigger picture?
Each individual should be judged on his or her own merits. If the “stigma” of being a Duck is so great as to cost any of us a job, then the world is a very sad place. In fact, it’s the same sad world that got us into this mess in the first place.